Omaima Nelson – Egyptian Model, American Murderer

Omaima Nelson is an Egyptian American and model who was convicted of murdering her husband, Bill Nelson. She is serving a life sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California. Her case made international headlines due to allegations of bondage sex, decapitation, castration, and cannibalism.

The Marriage and The Murder

Omaima Nelson was born and raised in Egypt and immigrated to the United States in 1986. She, then 23, met her husband Bill Nelson, a 56 year-old pilot, in October 1991. The couple married within days of meeting. Omaima would later claim that, during the couple’s month-long union, she suffered sexual abuse by her husband.

On Thanksgiving Day 1991, Omaima Nelson claimed that Bill had sexually assaulted her in their Costa Mesa, California apartment. Following this, Omaima stabbed Bill with scissors, then began beating him with a clothes iron. After murdering him, she began dismembering his body, and allegedly cooked his head and boiled his hands to remove his fingerprints. She then mixed up his body parts with leftover Thanksgiving turkey and disposed of him in a trash can. She reportedly castrated him in revenge for his alleged sexual assaults.

The Trial and The Aftermath

Photo by Bruce Chambers, The Orange County Register.

Omaima Nelson was arrested on a suspicion of murder charge in December 2, 1991, and her trial began almost exactly one year later on December 1, 1992. She was convicted of second-degree murder on January 12, 1993. She was sentenced to 28 years to life in prison.

Parole Denied

Omaima Nelson first became eligible for parole in 2006, but was denied when “commissioners found her unpredictable and a serious threat to public safety.”

She became eligible again in 2011, but was again denied by the parole board, citing that she had not taken responsibility for the murder, and would not be a productive citizen if she were freed.

Omaima Nelson, 43, a former nanny, commonly compared to the fictional cannibal killer Hannibal Lecter at the time of the murder in 1991, held that she was a changed woman, eager to live the “good life God meant.”

But first came the recounting of Nelson’s earlier life: by her account, the victim of almost unimaginable abuse as a child in Egypt. Later, a beauty with cut-glass cheekbones, who by prosecution accounts, traded on her sexuality for rent and cars from a long, overlapping line of men — most of them older.

Omaima Nelson Used Sex As A Con Game

Orange County Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Randy Pawloski, an original prosecutor in the case who took the unusual step of personally attending the hearing at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, said Nelson had a pattern of using sex as a con game, and that her games grew increasingly violent over the years.

In 1991 she met William Nelson in a bar playing pool, and within weeks they were married. Omaima Nelson says it was only then that her husband showed a violent side. She said he was trying to strangle her when she hit him with a lamp, stabbed him with scissors and killed him.

“If I didn’t defend my life, I would have been dead. I’m sorry it happened, but I’m glad I lived,” she said. “I’m sorry I dismembered him.”

The marriage lasted three weeks.

She Dressed In Red To Cook Her Husband

In the earlier court trial, a psychiatrist testified that Omaima Nelson said she put on red shoes, a red hat and red lipstick before chopping up and cooking her husband’s body. She said she prepared his ribs like in a restaurant and said aloud, “It’s so sweet.”

At the parole hearing, Omaima Nelson shook her head vehemently and grimaced as she denied eating her husband.

When asked the purpose for ‘cooking’ her husband Nelson declined to answer.

She told the board that she was grateful for the grace of God and her family and if released would return to live with her mother in Egypt.

Parole was denied. Omaima Nelson will not be able to seek parole again until 2026.

Omaima Nelson has been compared to fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, from Silence of the Lambs. Her case has been televised on the Investigation Discovery programs Happily Never After and Deadly Women.

credit murderpedia / in part – By Diana Marcum of the Los Angeles Times